What, doesn’t everyone park a convertible in their dining room? I address the pink elephant in the room, and then take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.

Here’s what we covered:

• 00:00 Start
• 01:03 MyTeaGotCold: Have you ever had a client turn off RCSI?
• 01:31 SportsFan101: Hi! My company uses vmware for production(on-prem). Current wait time for new VM is about 1 month(from request to SQL Server installed/configured). How are enterprise companies deploying new SQL Server VMs? Docker images? Vmware Vapp?
• 02:23 Blue Falcon: Should new SQL tables always be built with compression enabled? What are your pros / cons for compression?
• 03:33 Sierra117: Ever had a client make you take their security courses (spam email, don’t click on links you don’t know, how to spot generative AI, etc.)? I hate them. But I do bill the clients 5x time it takes to complete them. If you make me go through hell… Least I’m getting paid.
• 04:28 DataGuy: You work for a large company and are doing all greenfield development on brand new, isolated SQL clusters. What are you putting your foot down with devs to promote scalability? No ORDER BYs? No triggers (with business logic)? No long running queries? No SQL Agent jobs?
• 06:03 DavDBA: Hi Brent, My app’s not parameterizing queries, leading to duplicate plans in cache and Forced parameterization worries me due to sniffing. If I fix some queries to use params, will it cut duplicates, or will other unparametrized queries still clog cache? Thanks!
• 06:55 JC: Hey Brent – what are your thoughts about hosting an enterprise SQL Server environment on Citrix XenServer as the VM Hypervisor host?
• 08:15 VegasDBA: Hey Brent! I set up a distributed AG to a reporting server and when I change a certain proc on that reporting server from linked server to cross DB connections, the query runs forever. A single table with 1.7m rows is the culprit. LS: 6s. XDB: never finishes. No errors.
• 08:52 Dynomutt: How does PostgreSQL query tuning compare with SQL Server query tuning?
• 09:39 Josef: Should backups be stored on a separate network drive rather than the SAN used for the databases in an SQL Server failover cluster? What are the pros and cons of this approach?
• 10:54 chris: Hi Brent. For setting max mem you suggest leaving 4GB or 10% (whichever is more) for the OS. Can you help me understand why more memory is needed for the OS as you scale up the RAM? For example, with 200GB of RAM why would one need 20GB reserved for the OS instead of just 4GB?
• 12:21 MustangKirby: Loading a table with 93M records. There is a check constraint enforced by a UDF which includes data access so it’s slow. I can disable the constraint but then it takes forever to make it trusted again. Is there a way to directly update is_not_trusted in sys.check_constraints?
• 13:43 SportsFan101: Just wanted to say, that I’m a big fan of your training courses! Anyone on the fence about purchasing them should just treat themselves to an early Christmas present!
• 14:14 Josef: Is it safe to change a database’s compatibility level from SQL Server 2008 (100) to SQL Server 2022 (160)? Could this change improve performance, or should I be cautious about potential issues with queries or features?
• 14:58 Dopinder: Currently on Azure SQL 2019 VM. What are your pros / cons of upgrading to SQL 2022 vs waiting for SQL 2025?
• 16:23 SQL_Linux: Do you cover how to use extended events to find low performance or problematic queries in your courses?